Another day, another MacLeod (the word I’m using to describe my heavy-handed, Hugh MacLeod-inspired imagery). How many login/password combinations are you (or your browsers) remembering? Aside from the security issues inherent in having multiple keys around the web, each login/pass is another barrier to adoption, integration, usability, and usefulness. Customers are the silo, not publishers …
Category Archives: Customer Relationship
Two Tips for Cingular to Improve Customer Service
I caught Matt Ritchel’s Suddenly, an Industry Is All Ears bit in NYT on how Cingular is trying to improve their customer service. On page two of the article, Ritchel identifies two small, yet high impact changes Cingular could make to dramatically improve their customer service experience: “There is also a timer that tells the …
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Save Your Customers A 39 Cent Annoyance
Ironically, since the USPS raised the postage for a first-class letter to 39 cents, I’ve found myself with more outgoing mail. Both Netflix and my bank provide postage paid envelopes for my correspondence with them. So, it surprises and annoys me when I have to hunt down a stamp for things far more important than …
Distribution is Marketing
When we podcast the 2005 MIMA Summit – someone suggested we restrict access to the recordings. They’d be correct if the value of the conference was in the sessions. It’s not. The value is in the hallway conversations, the handshakes, business card exchanges, and direct personal interactions. The sessions themselves are strictly the focal point, …
We Need to Build More Parks Not More Prisons
Smarter people than I can debate the title of this post literally, I’m using it as a metaphor for web development and customer relationships overall. Vendors don’t have full control over their customers. Never did. Best they can do is encourage, support, and remove obstacles impeding their customers’ success. Especially if the vendor wants to …
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What if Your Customers Took Over Your Company’s Blog?
The Work Better Weblog is 2 years old this month. To celebrate, I’m starting an experiment in multi-author business blogs, community-building, and transparency – each Working Pathways client gets posting access. That’s right – if you’ve hired Working Pathways, you automatically receive a login and password to publish whatever you’d like to the Work Better …
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The Difference Between Consumers and Customers Part Three
I’ve always found the Cathedral and Bazaar metaphor compelling. Movie theaters, newspapers, television, radio, magazines are all cathedrals. The publishers place an artificial separation between them and the audience/consumers/eyeballs/gullets for their complete, discrete, highly-produced artifacts. One-size fitting all. Weblogs, Wikis, Bulletin Boards are bazaars. Down in the dirt. Personal connections, relationships, conversations, building-blocks. Each new …
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Lawyers That Get Niche Publishing and Podcasting
Some of you may remember the 6-part series I did with Parsinen Kaplan Rosberg & Gotlieb P.A. over at the First Crack Podcast. For your convenience, I’ve consolidated all the PKR&G podcast conversations including 2 bonus conversations that didn’t make the original series. This week PKR&G came out with their annual lifestyle magazine, “Perfectly Legal”. …
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On Measuring What Matters
I’ve been itching to see Dave Slusher’s reaction to the Audible Wordcast announcement and he didn’t disappoint. “What matters to me are the number of sensible comments, the other shows that quote me, the number of people that came up to me and talked to me at PME and told me they enjoyed the show. …
A Consumer Moratorium
Today, Doc pointed to Tim Jarrett saying (emphasis mine): “As I’ve mentioned before, I want a moratorium on the word consumer—both because it is disrespectful and because it builds bad thinking habits in companies that sell to ‘consumers’”. Smart, clued-in companies can signal they respect people by eradicating the word ‘consumer’ from their vocabulary (and …